How can we archive our present lives, wishes, and imaginations while reclaiming archives of the past, so as not to let the few remnants present we have fall into oblivion?
open to queer BIPOC
registration & questions via bissi@beursschouwburg.be
The aim of this workshop series is to collectively engage in reflections on our perception of what constitutes an archive, what are archival practices, and the ways we can reclaim and transform their classical conceptions. The archives brought by the participants and Noor will serve as our starting point.
We will also converse with archives found in public and private archiving centers in Belgium, seeking to engage our lived and imagined experiences in dialogue with them. How can we involve ourselves in a collective archiving process, including us, as workshop group members, and the queer racialized individuals who these archives speak about (and who have, in most cases, been dispossessed of their own stories)? We will endeavor to reshape classical archival narratives so they transcend the individual "I" to become a collective "we” – rather than, for instance, merely appending our personal stories to the preexisting ones.
From oral storytelling to writing, from bodily expression to simply being together, these emerging narratives can take many forms.
The workshop language will be English, with the possibility to switch to French if/when necessary.
No previous knowledge is required.
To bring the first day : a personal archive, whatever that may be.
It would be nice if you can attend every meeting.
Nour (also Noor or Nur) loves to research both by reading and writing, as well as through mediums such as digital illustration, video, installation and more recently textile -particularly crochet. They have an interdisciplinary Bachelor's degree from Maastricht University, where they took courses in gender studies, cultural studies, sociology and philosophy. Recently, they completed a Master's degree in Visual Arts at Sandberg Institute, which explored imagination as a method to decode, decolonise and liberate representations of Blackness in art and design. Between these two degrees, they mainly worked as a researcher, facilitator and occasional digital illustrator in the anti-racist associative sector. Currently, they are co-conducting an artistic research on the potential of archiving as a collective, artistic and activistic reappropriation praxis.
External eye and input giver: Aru Lee
